rogers military is guarding one of the biggest uranium mines in ms yeah one its own is say they want a better mining deal with paris and could be looking for other partner countries. locals from recently liberated parts of my claim be france met a fence him against islamic militants as come at a high cost to civilian lives. as america's new top diplomat meets his team we hear of revelations that many in the foreign service but far more than just time to the country. and the opposition in kuwait val's to keep protesting against the

country's unelected rulers after another activist is thrown behind bars for criticizing the monarchy. from a new city here in moscow this is r.t. with you twenty four hours a day the president has confirmed that french troops have been guarding one of his country's biggest uranium mines that's in a bid to avoid a repetition of last month's hostage crisis in neighboring algeria. thomas spoke to my colleague. the mine in question is the olive facility a location in which the french company a river has a large stake it's important to know that this is the second mission in africa completely separate from france's mission in mali which has been going on for nearly a month as a neighbor. mali and the situation there continues to remain unstable the french

government is making it clear that they are ready and willing to protect their assets in the region and on the african continent as a whole protecting assets in the region many know the gets most of its energy from nuclear power hence the uranium is very very important indeed so massive economic concerns are indeed but as you also mentioned we've called the french led multinational intervention going going in mali now boots on the ground in nigeria where it's certainly getting a lot of reaction from critics around the world at the moment certainly has been if you ask france they've pointed to the incident that happened last month in eastern algeria when islam ists took over a gas plant there eventually leading to forty eight people being killed thirty seven of those foreign workers france's predicting that more islamist retaliation to french presence in africa is likely and they say they want to prevent a tragic situation like this from happening again but then again is the world's fifth largest producer of uranium a product that is vital to the french economy in fact it's estimated that nearly

all or at least seventy five percent of france's electric infrastructure is dependent on nuclear power given this it makes sense that france would want to protect that resource at all costs the president has welcomed the french presence in the country and recognizes the need for the have and security but has also stated that they want to better deal when it comes to uranium exports measures economy is also largely dependent on your radio as well critics have already been wary of french involvement in mali claiming that the real motivation is a return to imperialism economic policy and a stronger control of a region that used to be french territory now with france's expansion into neighboring countries compiled with president expressing his concerns those critics now have a bit more that they can chew on. john laughlin who's the director of studies at the institute of democracy and cooperation in paris believes securing natural resources is not the only goal france has in the region and the two main characters in this drama. his own desire to strengthen the whole role on the international

stage in particular piece of being a european partners and also the american strict egypt plans for africa it's important to know that america which strongly supports france in this mali and intervention has plans for establishing a military presence in the military control over the whole of the african continent some people speculated that used the phrase that this was america leading from behind that america decided to put forward its european allies to do as it were its dirty work in a continent where as i'm sure many of your you viewers know china has been establishing an economic presence now very successfully for a large number of years so there is a scramble for africa isn't there or is it just to grab the resources yes it's obvious that the securing of energy resources is one of the key factors behind many if not most political developments today and that's why i say that the of course

the issue of hydrocarbons and uranium and other energy sources is a key and may even be the decisive factor in one in northeastern monny french jets have carried out a series of air strikes on the bases and field of islamic terrorists with the intervention now heading towards the desert and away from the cities or to report on what's left on the ground after the liberating troops move on. francoise hollande victorious trip to timbuktu marked the declaration that three major cities in northern mali have been declared liberated from rebels although the sharia law and islamic extremism the rebels enforced will not soon be forgotten nevertheless this victory is a partial one the militants have merely retreated and fled and the suffering in this war has seemed disproportionate to the gains made we're learning what happened in battle day by day in the town of qana we heard stories from the fog of war this

is mall settlement in the mopti region was seized by the more yo tribe they fled to the north when french troops showed up but it's reported that the cost of that victory was high while french planes killed only two rebels the number of civilian casualties was an estimated fourteen. i wasn't home when the bombing began i started praying when i learned my house was under attack they ruined everything i had my family and my livelihood my wife's name was i mean not her she was forty my son ali was eleven when adam was ten and so you know who was six they all died. old body that people such as this farmer idris ask themselves if the victory was worth it. we also met the campo family who had suffered badly when the bombing began everyone scatter it in the campo lost two of their saunas unable to swim they drowned in the river while fleeing the fighting. we also heard the story of

a young mother who died from shelters leaving three children behind a newborn baby. the village was a complete mess it's impossible to describe any discuss things i know for sure but i can say that all we had is gone. there's old few proving some kids came running up to us and said their mum had date i brought them to our house their mother died after an hour of clinging to life the children have nobody else but us. it's a disaster visited every house in the town people reject anything the military claims about victory and say war crimes must be prosecuted under the geneva convention towns like corner want more than just compassion people who suffered at the hands of terrorist groups and drug traffickers are now facing the misery inflicted by warfare which is about that yes probably without guns our watcher for our tea with john kerry being sworn in as the new u.s.

secretary of state last week the white house may have been hoping for some favorable coverage of its diplomatic efforts the revelations that he had to pay to play a role in the foreign service that brought clouds over capitol hill but he's got a chicken has more. as you can imagine the competition for diplomatic post is tough especially in safe and wealthy countries somewhere in western europe and asia a recent study by two professors of international relations at pennsylvania state university looked at available information on president obama's donors direct political contributions and the positions that they received and they concluded that those whose political connections to president obama were measured in dollars worth of the administration's service had an increased chance of representing the united states and western europe and a smaller chance of serving in say central asia or sub-saharan africa donors and advisers involved in the diplomatic selection process say the competition this year has been so tight that those who have raised less than a million dollars are for the most part unlikely to be considered so what is the

quote unquote price tag for the highly sought diplomatic posts according to this study friends and monaco topped the list with a level of personal contributions at six point two million dollars the price will quote unquote the price for a position in the u.k. the authors find appears to live between six hundred fifty thousand dollars and two point three million dollars a posting in luxembourg that tiny but very wealthy european country for example is valued as three point one million dollars dollars in direct contributions and appointment to portugal was predicted to have a value of around six hundred thousand dollars like all modern presidents before him president obama has appointed friends and donors to about thirty percent of diplomatic posts while seventy percent of the posts go to career diplomats so judging by this research career diplomats go to places like yemen while big donors

go to monaco nobody of course calls it bribery here these are just respectable donors who get what they want when they pay the price. the u.k. is reportedly preparing to test out a brand new drone which could herald a breakthrough in the art of unmanned warfare the aircraft is designed to be undetectable by radar and can even select targets by itself not the sort of first reports now from london. it can fly faster than the speed of sound it can deploy its own weapons and it can go deep into enemy territory now this is the ne british super drain as it's known in the tranter says been under development for many many years now costing hundreds of millions of pounds already but it's thought that this weather legionary niecy project is going to be taking is maiden voyage over the next couple of weeks that's what's expected now military chief has said that the trying to swill pave the way for a whole new generation of these new drones and it's being billed as the future of

the air force but experts have warned that this could open the doors to a whole new type of warfare there's concerns about robo wolf air where machines that are able to launch their own attacks could attack humans and of course a lot of control the sea that always surrounds the use of drones as well as deal then with the here and now because the controversy surrounding drone warfare has been highlighted recently when the u.n. launched an investigation in to civilian deaths caused by the drones now assisting the u.n. in their research it's a team from goldsmiths university of london and i'm joined by one of thirteen now professor. thank you very much for joining us today and this new technology a lot of talk about a lot of excitement but a huge number of unanswered questions that go along with these developments you're taking part in this investigation now we haven't even really got questions answered eight of the legality of these attacks and yet we're seeing technology sort of

leapfrogging over the law at this point i think that what. we are seeing a de facto legislation by practice. of warfare actually creating the law for the problem of the law for war because it always legs behind the technologies are full of course the chronology moves much. plastered in the laws of war and the technology to change the way in which we conduct our wars when we speaking about drone warfare we're not really speaking about area bombing we're speaking about targeted attacks and especially the kind of a new type of attack that we've been seeing in the last decade that is called an extra dude juridical assassination these really are based on kill ists and they are compiled by somebody either authorized by the people with the reason or transparency and we do not know how that process is under ticker and of course this is really what your investigations hinge on is gathering that all

important data is that absolutely in the forensic architecture project at goldsmiths what we look at is the nature of war in an urban area and the most strong attacks are launched on inhabited areas areas with a lot of civilians with civilians and militant. entangled in the numbers are very difficult to establish because both israel and the united states would consider every man over a certain age sometimes sixteen sometimes eighteen is a militant by definition we know it is not true the details of that investigation the results are expected towards the end of the year old tabor thank you for joining us today to talk about britain and of course all the unanswered questions that go along with that. when it's not only the latest innovations that are causing ructions in britain but also secrets on the list from a deeply buried possed a new report on the british police have been stealing the identities of dead children for decades and using them during covert operations the details.

and the artistic director of famous bolshoi ballet heads to germany for special treatment saying you know who is behind the volunteer acid attack on him two weeks ago that just ahead after the break. for the. science technology innovation. developments around russia we've. covered.

news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images we're seeing from the streets and canada. operations. he continues here in r.t. israel is reportedly considering building a buffer zone with a high tech security fence and on its border with syria it's designed to prevent threats from radicals if the assad regime is overthrown dr jamal wakim believes that televisa motivation has nothing to do with security for a nearly two years now. at the time of the sort of concede there were no attacks

against israel by the insurgents not by the regime itself so this is a mere pretext israel wants to take advantage of. weakening regime in syria to improve its strategic position especially in defense of its claim to the golan heights imposing a buffer zone will make israel and the future to. negotiate over withdrawing from this part of their own zone rather than withdrawing from the golan this is an attempt to annex more territories and it's at the same time and at them to threaten . israel extends its domain by another seventeen kilometers this will make it reach close very close to the mosque because it's trying to destabilize the regime and it knows very well that the collapse of the regime will lead to

a probable division of syria which runs in the interest of israel. the artistic director of. the news traveling to germany for specialist treatment talked to yvonne and acid attack against him just over two weeks ago and will be trying to help. reports now from the hospital where he was taken immediately after the attack is doing rather well surprisingly well actually he did thank the doctors for doing everything in their power to pull him out of a very difficult situation that he found himself in. third degree burns and those are very severe to his face and he said he's full of hope for full recovery and he is full of willpower and he actually looked very enthusiastic and upbeat about the whole situation of course considering his circumstances actually he did appear to be quite his road to recovery did speak about person who is who

has been supposedly behind the attack he did say that he knows exactly who it was on this particular day today did not want to talk about the investigation at all so as not to interfere with the investigation he did however mention. he did to receive threats before but he also mentioned and this is important according to himself he didn't mention that he's continuing to work with everybody who has been left in charge. he said that nothing about the boy changing the performances and everything about the theater will be carrying on before. in kuwait an opposition activist has reportedly been sentenced to five years in prison for criticizing the country's unelected ruler on twitter it's the first time a person has been convicted on such charges in the country and the last two months speaking out against the emir of kuwait is considered a state security charge and just international recently hit out of the monarchy

increasing restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly protests have been raging against the government and its crackdown on dissent since two thousand and eleven tension flared even more after december's parliamentary poll which was boycotted by the opposition one former m.p. claims the country's democracy has been disfigured. model. we refute claims that the national assembly represents the people of kuwait around seventy percent of the people boycotted the election and the assembly itself was elected thanks to an unconstitutional decree by the government which wanted a parliament it could control its lawmakers have failed to address widespread allegations of corruption democracy has taken a twisted for it is the only democracy which is seeing an increase of corruption we will continue to hold peaceful marches peaceful rallies and we will continue to gather and protest. and now to another molecule that has its own problems with the

opposition bahrain and the regime forces there once again clashed with police in various parts of the country with ortiz used tear gas against the crowds which were hurling far bombs the gulf kingdom has been cracking down on pro-reform demonstrators for two years arresting pal's ns including prominent activists the government claims it's taken steps to address the brutality of the security forces but opposition campaigners say daily assaults continue unabated. number of dead from a suicide bomb attack on a group of fighters is risen to nineteen more than forty others were wounded the incident took place as men gather to collect their salaries outside an office in the north of baghdad the blast comes a day after several suicide attackers targeted a provincial police headquarters in kirkuk killing at least fifteen and wounding dozens. a skeleton found under a car park in the city of leicester in the u.k.

has been confirmed as that of king richard the third of them on it was the last english king to be killed in battle back in fourteen eighty five but his grave was lost in the sixteenth century after the demolition of the church he was buried next to the remains will be reinterred unless to complete all the details of the burial ceremony yet to be released of the south korean the u.s. have kicked off a three day joint naval training exercise it comes after north korea's recent threat to conduct its third nuclear test and it can be an international human rights lawyer and co-founder of the national campaign to end the korean war believes the saber rattling is not exactly going to help to ease the tension. the worst thing you can do under these circumstances is to inflame volatile situation to conduct these military exercises that always inflame that use live ammunition up and down the border with with north korea this is inflammatory on a lot of levels and we need to step back from these naval exercises it's like

a race to the bottom if you will when are we going to get more creative in the way that we resolve conflict in this world this conflict gives us such an opportunity with a new secretary of state new leader in south korea we should be pushing for peace suspend these naval exercises and go from there yes there should be non proliferation of nuclear weapons on the korean peninsula but we don't even recognize north korea as a nation have a peace treaty or formal relations to deal with these matters what do we expect. an investigation by the guardian newspaper has revealed britain's largest police force stole the identities of dozens of dead children for use by undercover offices the scheme went ahead without informing or consulting any of the parents of bristol based investigative journalist tony goals and fills the metropolitan police's methods a completely unacceptable. wondering

if i live in a democracy or not we're talking about the identities of eighty dead children stolen by the police i mean you do want to tell you where else these infiltrations have been taking place as well do they have police agents within our political parties where are the lines being drawn because it doesn't seem like there are any lines being drawn are absolutely behind the former director of public prosecutions macdonald who is now saying there must be a public inquiry into these kinds of police practices let's not forget these are crown servants does her majesty know that they're up to this does she approve and i mean there has to be really deep inquiry here the guardian have done up a real can of worms and there's absolutely no accountability it seems why these things that have been authorised through through scotland yard the idea that people haven't complained about it therefore it's ok well of course i'm not going to complain about it if they don't know about it it's almost like the scotland yard is being run like some kind of secret cult we've got to break that cult if we're going to have justice thousands of people in america forced to undergo polygraph testing

every year in the name of national security that's a minute expose ringing the alarm over the us federal agencies exceeding their legal ethical limits to determine who can be trusted what is marina portnoy has done for us now. for more than three decades john sullivan worked as a polygraph examiner for america's central intelligence agency today the retired cia employee is offering some strong opinions about the nation's lie detector policy too many honest people are too many people who should be passing their tests aren't and i and there's no there's no accountability for that. last year more than seventy three thousand americans were reportedly required to undergo polygraph tests in order to get or keep jobs with the federal government according to an investigation by mcclatchy newspapers a growing number of u.s. agencies are asking employees and applicants intimate questions that extend way

beyond the realm of national security probing matters such as sexual conduct financial matters and past personal relationships a woman was pressured to talk about her experience being molested as a child and when the polar bear for said that he refused to go on with the interrogation he alleges that he was pressured to go back and continue and tara gating are a decade ago the national academies an organization advising washington on scientific matters urged the feds to stop using polygraphs as a screening technique scientists found that polygraphs aren't reliable enough to prevent innocent people from failing and deceptive candidates from passing i think it's important to understand that the polygraph is not just. for screening it's an interrogation tool. there's

a question that the trip that leads to indication of. the drilling down. question that they get asked may well be quite true over the past twenty. at least fifteen federal agencies including the n.s.a. and f.b.i. have reportedly continued or expanded their polygraph screenings with nearly five million people having access to classified information washington maintains that polygraph testing is the most effective way from preventing secrets from being leaked lisa ribicoff is an independent polygraph examiner and investigator who uses the polygraph program designed by homeland security she contends that it's ninety eight percent accurate i do think that there are some questions pertaining to some emotional aspects and personal situations should not be included but i do understand why they're included on the basis of that the government needs to see

how exactly what their breaking point is what are they willing to discuss what are they not willing to discuss however applicants who are denied a coveted position after failing a polygraph are prohibited from accessing the records of their interrogation and are often barred from contesting the results were filing complaints in federal court in two thousand and four the cia veteran who conducted lie detector interrogations for thirty one years failed his own screening there was absolutely no question in my mind the test was wrong it's this was a terrible test sullivan lost his security clearance and was denied a job with a federal contracting agency he claims his examiner falsified the results possible retribution for sullivan his book detailing america's polygraph system subs a come in for a polygraph test now are guilty until proven innocent and i think that's. a corruption and an abuse of the process the obama administration is now promising to draft a new national polygraph policy that would prevent agencies from pushing legal or

ethical boundaries during screenings but at the moment the program has no oversight or eligibility meaning tens of thousands of u.s. citizens will continue getting personally probes in the name of national security bring up or nine fourteen new york. time now full of the business update with natasha let's watch is it true that the sochi winter olympics in twenty fourteen are going to become the most expensive games ever well it's certainly truth you believe the official estimates of a fifty billion dollars price tag i'll tell you all about that on the whys and hows and the business but after a short break if you put it thanks to. secretary

of state hillary clinton recently testified to congress in regards to the attack on the u.s. consulate was killed an american ambassador in benghazi libya during the testimony couldn't rather calmly said things like that the revolutions that sprang up during the arab spring like in libya where the events in bali have created instability and safe havens for terrorists and she made it clear that there is no doubt that the algerian terrorists had weapons from libya so the us secretary has basically admitted that the actions of the usa and nato have caused a mass instability that has allowed the seeds of terrorism to grow when the justification for most of the actions in the muslim world is to stop evil dictators who harbor terrorists or spread chiding democracy if libya would have been left alone algerian terrorists wouldn't be getting any weapons from it now this is like an exterminator accidentally or maybe on purpose actually feeding the roaches in your basements that there are ten times more of them and then saying that he has to keep working.